Christmas has come in June for the Democratic Party. Republican Joe Barton just delivered a huge, nicely wrapped present to Democrats. The only question is whether they'll open it and make use of it, or halfheartedly play with it once and then throw it in a corner (since the Democratic Party is kind of fickle about using such free gifts from Republicans, for no explicable reason whatsoever). But more on the flailing Joe Barton in a bit.

First, I have to say something. Earlier this week, President Obama united the nation. Just not how he wanted to, that's all. Obama gave his first primetime Oval Office speech Tuesday, and pretty much everybody agreed that they hated his speech. The Left hated it, the Right hated it, the media hated it (albeit all for different reasons). So here we are, not a "red" America or a "blue" America, but a United States of America, panning the president's speech.

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This is really nothing more than a glorified "Program Note," just to warn everyone. The wife's car, which she totally depends on, had its own blowout two days ago. Yesterday, many hours were spent diagnosing the leak. Today, many hours were spent beneath the engine of the car, actually fixing the leak.

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Most Americans know U2's song "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It's a highly recognizable piece of music, and the song's been popular ever since they wrote it. But most people in this country who at least can sing along with the chorus simply have no idea what the song's about. If they've seen a live performance of the anthem, they may be dimly aware that frontman Bono is adamant that "this is not a rebel song," without truly grasping what he's talking about. Not a rebel song? Um, OK, Bono, sure, just sing it for us, OK?

Bono is adamant about the song he wrote, because, as he put it during a performance in 1982: "For a long time I have been... frightened... frightened about writing a song about where I live... the place I live... Ireland and its problems... this is called: 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'... this is not a rebel song...." Bono was frightened that his song would become a rallying cry, and lead to more death. Because, while "bloody" is inexplicably a "bad word" in British English, the song's title is in no way metaphorical. It describes an event which took place in 1972. A bloody event. And Bono's fears were that singing about it would just lead to more of the same -- which is why he cries "I'm so sick of it!" during most live performances of the song. Because the song is a plea for peace, and decidedly not a rallying cry to arms.

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President Obama, in his first-ever primetime address from the Oval Office, did not mince words. He didn't have time to -- the speech was one of the shortest I think I've ever seen from Barack Obama, clocking in at 17 or 18 minutes. But although he didn't take a lot of time, he covered a lot. Of particular note was the directness of his language, which at times could even be described as "forceful."

Since I'm writing this almost immediately after Obama's speech, I am not going to address much in the way of substance in what Obama said. I personally think that today is merely the first part of this substance, which will be bookended tomorrow by filling in some details after the president meets with BP executives. I think the president specifically left those details to be addressed tomorrow on purpose, so I'm going to wait until then to address the White House's plan for the cleanup and beyond after the results of the meeting are announced tomorrow.

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The White House has apparently realized that they have something of a perception problem when it comes to President Obama and the federal government's response to the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. So this week will be devoted to attempting to redeem Obama's image as being "in charge" of what is going on down there. Today, the president flew down to the Gulf, where he will be visiting all the states that have so far been affected. He'll spend the night in the region, then fly back to Washington to give his first-ever Oval Office address to the nation on primetime television. Wednesday, the bigwigs of BP will come to the White House for a meeting.

All this activity is welcome, because up until now the White House has seemed a bit adrift in their response to the tragedy. They may have been on top of the entire situation from Day One, as they claim, but it wasn't readily apparent to the public, meaning they either were actually adrift, or they have been having a communication and press relations problem. This must be frustrating to the White House, since the press has been somewhat lacking in their own response and coverage. Case in point, after obsessing for a solid week that the president needed to "show some rage" over the situation, the press immediately pounced when Obama did show a bit of annoyance, immediately proclaiming that he was "too angry," or the press just giggled in true Beavis and Butthead fashion: "heh heh heh... the president said ass... heh heh."

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President Barack Obama's administration was supposed to follow a basic premise: never let a crisis go to waste. That was according to one of his own advisors, shortly after Obama took office. But so far, their track record on doing so has been decidedly mixed.

When Obama took office, there certainly was no shortage of crises awaiting them. To their credit, they moved swiftly on their stimulus package, which stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs to the point where last month was deemed a "bad" month, because only 40,000 private-sector jobs were created (along with 400,000 temporary Census jobs). That's a long way from when he took office, when 750,000 jobs were being lost each and every month -- an 800,000 jobs-per-month difference, in fact. Obama also used this crisis to pass his healthcare reform measure, which all but consumed an entire year for him and for Congress.

But Wall Street is still operating under the same rules they were when our economy almost collapsed. It's been almost a year and a half, and we have not changed the rules of the road for Wall Street (or Main Street, for that matter). On this issue, significant progress has at least been made. The House and Senate have named the membership of the conference committee which will hash out final language between the Wall Street reform bills which have already passed both houses. Obama says he wants a bill to sign by the Fourth of July, which may be optimistic but is certainly possible if the committee doesn't get bogged down. So we may not have all that long to wait before the financial crisis can truly have been said not to have "gone to waste" for Obama and Democrats in Congress.

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Many areas of the country take perverse pride in being "the worst" when it comes to politics, in much the same way most people take perverse pride in the fact that their local drivers are, quite obviously, the worst in the entire country. Perhaps it's just human nature. But in some places, the politics is noticeably more hardball than in others, even to outsiders. Which brings us to South Carolina.

South Carolinians are notorious for "bringing a gun to a knife fight" in the political arena. Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss certainly proved this a few years back, with the disgusting advertisement he ran against Max Cleland during his campaign (the less said about this ad the better). But this year may go down as one of the strangest in South Carolina's checkered political history (which includes being the first state to commit treason against the federal government, in case anyone's forgotten).

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The Wall Street reform effort in Congress will enter a new phase tomorrow, as the conference committee between the House and Senate will meet to begin hashing out the differences between the House and Senate versions which have already passed. The membership of this conference committee was announced today, and the committee will hold its first meeting tomorrow.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office released the list of Democratic House members who will be on this important conference committee. As always, Pelosi also had some feisty things to say about the Democratic position:

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Gosh, here's hoping everyone is having a super Tuesday today!

I'm sorry if that was a bit snide, but I have to say I'm getting a little sick of "super" Tuesdays. The term "Super Tuesday" has, in my opinion, now officially jumped the shark. Case in point: today's primaries are the second time the media has used this term during this year's primary season.

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Several states hold primaries this Tuesday, many of which may have implications beyond their state. For instance, the primary runoff election in Arkansas will likely be the closest-watched race (at least by Democrats), to see if challenger Bill Halter can pull an upset against sitting Senator Blanche Lincoln, who enraged many by her corporate-friendly work on the health reform. Other states will also have interesting races to watch, but today I'm going to concentrate on California's primary. Call me parochial if you will (I live in the Golden State), but there are a few California races worth watching tomorrow.

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